1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to an image input apparatus capable of registering information received from an information processing apparatus connected via a network. More particularly, the present invention relates to an image input apparatus capable of registering multiple sets of information received from an information processing apparatus connected via a network at once, and an information registration method in the image input apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
A “network scanner” connected to a network, such as a local area network (LAN), can be shared by multiple user terminals connected to the network. FIG. 16 is a drawing illustrating a configuration of an exemplary conventional network scanner system. The exemplary conventional network scanner system includes a network scanner 200, a delivery server 300, and a user terminal 400 that are connected to each other via a network. The delivery server 300 retains management data including the address (e.g. IP address) of the user terminal 400 in its internal memory. The management data are used to deliver image data to the user terminal 400. The delivery server 300 sends image data scanned by the network scanner 200 to the user terminal 400, which is specified when the scanning is requested, based on the management data retained in the internal memory and according to the server message block (SMB) protocol supported by its operating system (this mechanism is called “Scan to SMB”).
Accordingly, to use the network scanner 200, it is necessary to specify information regarding a recipient user terminal 400 on the network scanner 200. However, it is bothersome to specify information regarding the user terminal 400 each time when making a scanning request. For this reason, the network scanner 200 is configured to allow the user to register user terminal information in its memory. The delivery server 300 retrieves the address of the user terminal 400 corresponding to the user terminal information in the network scanner 200 from the internal memory and sends image data to the retrieved address.
One problem with the above approach is that it is still bothersome to register user terminal information on a console of the network scanner 200, and another problem is that if a registered user terminal is not ON, delivery of image data results in failure. An operating system has been developed to solve these problems. The developed operating system automatically registers user terminal information of a running user terminal (where the operating system is installed) in a network scanner.
Meanwhile, the amount of memory of a network scanner usable for storing user terminal information is limited, and therefore it is not practical to store user terminal information of all user terminals in a network without limitation. Patent document 1 discloses an apparatus and a method for managing user terminal information in a memory. In the disclosed apparatus, user terminal information is managed as an address book stored in a memory. The disclosed apparatus identifies entries in the address book that have not been used for a long time based on their last accessed dates and removes the identified entries. Thus, the disclosed apparatus or method makes it possible to remove user terminal information that is currently not being used and thereby to improve memory use efficiency.    [Patent document 1] Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2002-171333
A network scanner is shared by multiple users (user terminals), and therefore its memory for storing user terminal information is also shared by multiple users. One way to share the memory is to allocate an equal amount of memory area to each user. Meanwhile, user terminal information may include an information item regarding an application (e.g. an optical character recognition (OCR) application for handling text documents, a drawing program for handling graphics, etc.) that handles or receives image data sent from a delivery server or a network scanner in addition to the address of a user terminal and a folder location where image data are to be stored (such applications are hereafter called “services” and each set of user terminal information or destination information including an information item regarding a service is hereafter called a “service entry”). Assuming that a network scanner is configured to allow a user to register multiple service entries, the number of service entries may vary depending on the user. Also, even the same user may want to register different numbers of service entries depending on his/her current needs. In this case, allocating an equal amount of memory area to each user may not be practical.
Also in this case, it is preferable to automatically register service entries from a user terminal since it is bothersome to register a service entry, which includes various information items related to a user terminal, using a console of a network scanner. When using this approach, it is important to prevent a shortage of memory used for storing service entries. To prevent such a shortage of memory, the method disclosed in patent document 1 described above may be used.
However, when multiple service entries are registered at once by one registration request from a user terminal, it happens that some of the registered service entries are used frequently and others are not used at all. Therefore, it is preferable to incorporate in an image input apparatus a mechanism or a method for managing service entries taking into account the user terminals that have requested the registration of the service entries in addition to their last accessed dates and the number of registered service entries.